im from australia and pre-ordered the 3 corebook bundle back on the 2024-06-27 - 05:38:35
via the "outside the US" link
 
received the players handbook without issues (just a few days late) - everything all good 
now onto the issue and question:
1. there has been no update in the tracking information since the 7th... (scalefast) with the last messages saying the following:

 2. contacting auspost (the company scalefast was ment to hand my parcel to), i am informed of the following: 

i even made a prediction at the time which seems to be occurring:

 3. following instructions i reached out to the support team at "dnd-support.wizard" and informed them so an investigation could begin, they collected my info and to my knowledge an investigation has started (atleast i hope it has) upon checking with them again today i was told the following: 

 4. upon reading this i reached back out to auspost (despite previous conversations stating they had not received it) and was told the following:

and finally now im here unsure what to do and looking for insight and suggestions
since the people i purchased from are basically saying - its not their responsibility or scalefasts to find my parcel, and that its instead on me and auspost to find the parcel" (if my interpretation is correct)
yet ausposts says "its the responsibility of the sending postal service, and that they cant investigate a parcel they dont have"

please help....

I'm sorry. I've been in this situation where I've bought from one company, then they've subcontracted it out to another. The instant anything goes wrong, they point to the other because they don't really want to deal with it. And in a sense, I can see why. WotC sent the book, so they consider their part done, AusPost believe they haven't received it so they don't want to take responsibility. Sucks though because there's no accountability at this point.

I don't know what the timescales involved with shipping to Aus are - I get the impression that it's unearthly though, with some book orders taking weeks. If it's possible that the book is still on the boat, then be patient. If not, start kicking up a fuss with WotC (or whoever it is that you paid for the book). Point out that you've paid them, and so consider it their responsibility to get their product to you in a reasonable fashion. Point out that the chain of custody shows that it hasn't been given to AusPost, so they still have responsibility. Start talking about refunds - refunds are doubly bad news for companies, so they tend to start listening when you mention taking your money back.

It's not a nice position to be in. I hope it gets resolved form you.

Quote from Linklite >>

I'm sorry. I've been in this situation where I've bought from one company, then they've subcontracted it out to another. The instant anything goes wrong, they point to the other because they don't really want to deal with it. And in a sense, I can see why. WotC sent the book, so they consider their part done, AusPost believe they haven't received it so they don't want to take responsibility. Sucks though because there's no accountability at this point.

I don't know what the timescales involved with shipping to Aus are - I get the impression that it's unearthly though, with some book orders taking weeks. If it's possible that the book is still on the boat, then be patient. If not, start kicking up a fuss with WotC (or whoever it is that you paid for the book). Point out that you've paid them, and so consider it their responsibility to get their product to you in a reasonable fashion. Point out that the chain of custody shows that it hasn't been given to AusPost, so they still have responsibility. Start talking about refunds - refunds are doubly bad news for companies, so they tend to start listening when you mention taking your money back.

It's not a nice position to be in. I hope it gets resolved form you.

 
thanks for the suggestions - will keep at it and if no luck will be seeking the full refund of the $197 USD (which is now over $300 aud) 

anywho will give it upto another week of chasing down the parcel (no clue who im chasing though) before seeking the full refund (honestly got low hopes for the monster manual due to all this)

an update of the situation - book still missing, process still in limbo and getting frustrated (to say the least)
heres how the conversation is progressing: 

i informed the support team of ausposts reply that the package is not on their internal computers and got the following response:

 and once again im palmed off onto auspost, so i reach out to them requesting the package be marked as return to sender (to hopefully get one resent)
here is their response:

 upon finishing the conversation i went back to the support team to let them know 
and once again the tickets status was marked as "solved" - which needless to say is not the case and honestly making it hard not to swear 
thus this was my response:

so far seems like:
the people who i bought the product of wont help (wizards of the coast or scalefast - since they believe its not their responsibility to provide a service or the product purchased)
the shipping company cant help (auspost - since they have not received the parcel, no record of it entering australia on internal computers)

honestly feels like im being told "thanks for your money, no product for you..." 
and starting to scratch my head as to what I can do.... any further suggestions are welcome because im lost as to what to do at this point 

will update further as this progresses - hopefully it can be resolved before the monster manual 2024 is ment to be shipped.... 

I don't know if I've missed it in there somewhere, but has WotC actually claimed that it's been handed to AusPost? Or are they saying "meh, CBA, just talk to AusPost, it'll get there when it gets there"?

Quote from AuroraMoon >>

3. following instructions i reached out to the support team at "dnd-support.wizard" and informed them so an investigation could begin, they collected my info and to my knowledge an investigation has started (atleast i hope it has) upon checking with them again today i was told the following: 

"Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast Customer Support! At this stage in the shipping process, your order is in the hands of the shipping company and on its way to you. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide further information regarding the shipping other than what is available in your provided tracking link.
 
Shipping Company: Australia Post 
Tracking ID: **********************

For additional information regarding your shipment, we recommend contacting the shipping company directly regarding your parcel. At this time, contacting the shipping company on your behalf is not a service that Wizards of the Coast or our partners at Scalefast provide.
 
I’ll be glad to help you further if you have any other questions or concerns!"

 

 
i took the above as them claiming that its in the hands of auspost, which seems to have resulted in the back and forth with both parties pointing at the other and process being in limbo with neither seemingly able to help. so yes it does kinda feel like that

however i truely hope that there is more to the delivery process that has been overlooked, atleast then ill have somewhere to enquire about the parcel, unfortunately will have to wait until monday/tuesday to get more clarification on the overall shipping process and if any others were involved.

honestly at end of day all i want is:
1. what i paid for in a timely matter, considering it was a preorder almost 5months ago, it shouldnt be that difficult 
2. some accountability or direction in what my options are and how to get the process progressing (even if it was "sorry your parcel got lost, we will investigate and if parcel shows up we will get it marked as return to sender, in meantime we will wait and resend the dungeon masters guide when we send out your monster manual, would that work for you?" and i would be happy with that since i atleast would know whats going on)

so this will be the last update to this from me unless something goes majorly wrong or if parcel is mutilated beyond recognition 

the gods smile upon us and we are finally out of limbo :)
seems there was finally an update yesturday night/today in the shipping/tracking process by auspost
and the dungeon masters guide is now in australia - unsure where it was hiding for the past 20+ days since it only arrived yesturday to be cleared by customs within 24hrs....

either way its been processed at the sorting facility and estimated to arrive around the 28th-29th. 

as for the support team - no response as of 4days ago....
if done work behind scenes - thank you
if not then - theres room for improvement 

I'm glad that it's [hopefully] been sorted and you'll get your book soon. I have to admit that it would have stressed me out - I don't like limbo, especially when they're passing the buck to one another. I'm guessing it got signed off from WotC at the dock as having been taken off their hands, then it sat for ages until they loaded it to a ship. Not the best in terms of accountability nor swiftness, but itnwould explain the limbo of no one knowing where it is.

This is more of an anecdote than anything truly helpful.

Years ago, I bought a bunch of laptops from Dell. I received confirmation of purchase, with a wording of 'items will be received after the 21st of may' or something to that effect. 

Now, I was a younger man at the time, and I really thought that would mean something like on the 21st, or like a day later at most. I was deplorably wrong. After waiting a few days, I contacted Dell and was told that the laptops would be delivered at some point, any point really, after the 21st. I expressed some dissatisfaction with this time frame, but waited a few more days.

After a week, I once again contacted Dell, this time asking for a supervisor. Which I got. She was frankly quite impressively rude, and took zero responsibility for the missing laptops. This isn't really to rant against Dell, I think the local organisation in Denmark may simply have been ... well. 

Anyways, I got one thing from my conversation with the supervisor: The airport handling company was called Bax. 

So. My next stop was to call Bax. Only to discover, lo and behold, they are bankrupt! WTF? So .. this at least, Dell didn't know.

Further digging revealed that Bax's remaining open business had been taken over by DB Schenker. So I called them. And now something magical happened. I was transferred, and went into a loop of letting a phone ring out, thn auto-transfer to another and letting that ring out, then another auto-transfer. And then someone at DB Schenker, a nice lady whose name I long forgot, picked it up. Not her phone, mind you - she was just passing in the hallway, and decided 'I'll take this, see what's up.'

She had no idea about the missing laptops, she was from another department. But she was on good terms with the warehouse manager. So she promised to go down there, and ask. And she'd call me back. 

And she did. She walked down there, spoke with the manager, and he told her he had a bunch of laptops with incorrect lading markers or some such: They couldn't be delivered, because the scanners couldn't read the QR code or whatever. 

And so, through some diligence but mostly blind luck, I managed to locate our missing laptops, and we could resume work. Hooray.

If there's any moral to this, it's something like: If you keep trying, eventually you'll hit someone who's willing to take responsibility. Maybe.

parcel (dungeon masters) received today in good condition - seemed to have different packaging then the players handbook..

that aside, happy i now have the book and the quick delivery (once limbo ended and the book was found)
now looking forward to the monster manual preferably without limbo :)